July-August 2025 Blog: Wrestling Iguanas and Other Stories/Caribbean Literature Day

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 July-August 2025 Blog: Wrestling Iguanas and Other Stories/Caribbean Literature Day

It is Caribbean Literature Day. I am a Caribbean writer who lives in Switzerland, lived for one year in London, England, and spent more than a decade teaching at the University of Liberia, in Liberia, West Africa. I am a poet, short story writer, and writer of personal essays. My work reflects my journey from the Caribbean, the cultural womb that birthed me, to Liberia, West Africa, the navel string of most Caribbean culture, and now Switzerland, an old European culture that has grown on me over time.

My work has mainly focused on my poetry collections. But on this Caribbean Literature Day, I would like to focus on the short story and creative non-fiction collection I have been working on for many years. It is almost ripe and ready to be plucked.

For some, it would be a lifetime of work. The collection is called Wrestling Iguanas and Other Stories. The iguanas in the title symbolize our life struggles. And if you have lived as long as I have, you have survived your tests on this earth, and this is not the end of it.

Many of these stories have been published; the earliest, “Easter Sunday,” was first published in The Caribbean Writer in 1996 and re-published in Norway in 2001 in Karibia Forteller: Karibiske Noveller, Die norske Bokklubbene. “Easter Sunday” was republished again in 2022 in Bookends, The Jamaica Observer.

The collection will also include “The Haunt of Alma Negron,” published in St. Somewhere Journal in 2013. https://www.stsomewherejournal.com/2013/01/issue-january-2013.html, and republished in Bookends, The Jamaica Observer in 2022.

This collection also includes “Salacia’s Revenge,” published in WomanSpeak: A Journal of Writing and Art by Caribbean Women, Vol. 9, 2018, ed. Lynn Sweeting.

Two of my short stories have won The Caribbean Writer prizes. They include “Bitterleaf,” published in volume 22 in 2008, and “Saving Papa from the Bedside Flirts,” volume 37 in 2023. The short story “The Remnant” was also published in Volume 24 of The Caribbean Writer in 2021.

I am extremely grateful to Bookends of the Jamaica Observer for also publishing the following short stories: “The Waterfront’s Women and Men,” 2023, “Wimmelskafthill”, 2022, and “Pinky,” 2024.

The short story “NightCap” was published in Musings in A Teashop: An Anthology by Poetry and Prose, Trinidad, 2024.

Published personal essays include “ A Morning at Waterside,” Stepaway Magaine, https://stepawaymagazine.com/  2013, “ A Kind of Refugee/Living in Limbo, published in WomanSpeak, Vol 7, 2014, ed. Lynn Sweeting, and “Sunrise in the Afternoon,” https://voxpopulisphere.com/2021/04/06

I have published quite a few poetry collections, and publishing this collection of short stories and personal essays is my next big project. You can see that I have my work cut out for me. And now I must get back to this challenge.

Althea Romeo Mark is the author of two full-length poetry collections, The Nakedness of New and If Only the Dust Would Settle (English-German), and four chapbooks, Beyond Dreams: The Ritual Dancer, Two Faces, Two Phases, Palaver, and Shu-Shu Moko Jumbi: The Silent Dancing Spirit.

Her work has been inspired by major transitions in her life: Her family moving from Antigua (then a British colony) to the US Virgin Islands...she moving to Liberia in 1976 and having to flee with her family in 1990 due to the Liberian Civil War (1990-2014), and,  her family having to declare themselves refugees in London, UK. And finally, her family had to start all over again in Switzerland, which welcomed her husband, who had studied medicine there. Her family’s new beginning was a challenge because of encountering a new culture and language. Switzerland is now home.

Awards and prizes include: The 2023 Vincent Cooper Literary Prize to a Caribbean author for exemplary writing in Caribbean Nation Language (a term used by celebrated post-colonial Caribbean author Kamau Brathwaite to describe vernacular language born in the Caribbean). Poetry Prize for poems published in POEZY 21:Antologia Festivaluluiinternational Noptile De Poezie De Curtea De Arges, Romania; the Marguerite Cobb McKay Prize, The Caribbean Writer for her short story “Bitterleaf,” in Volume 22; short story prize for “Easter Sunday,” Stauffacher English Short Story Competition in Switzerland, Poetry Award for poem “Ole No-Teeth Mama,” Cuyahoga Community Writers Conference and a Scholarship Award from Breadloaf Writers’ Conference, Middlebury College, Vermont, USA.